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Message from the President

Collaborations

It’s a story we probably don’t tell often enough.
Williamsburg’s restoration actually began forty-two
years before W. A. R. Goodwin interested philanthropist
John D. Rockefeller Jr. in the idea. It started
in 1884 when Cynthia Beverley Tucker Coleman organized
Bruton Parish children to refurbish the disintegrating
tombstones in their church’s ancient graveyard. Next, she rescued the tumbledown Magazine, and soon,
at her Nicholson Street home, she and Mary Jeffrey
Galt of Norfolk founded the Association for the Preservation
of Virginia Antiquities—today’s Preservation
Virginia.

APVA secured for posterity not only the Magazine
but the Gaol, the Palace icehouse, and the Capitol’s
foundations, as well as the 22.5 acres of Jamestown
Island on which the 1607 colonists built
their fort. Those acres and 1,477 more on the
island under the stewardship of the National
Park Service make up Historic Jamestowne.

In 1926, Dr. Goodwin, who had been
allied with Mrs. Coleman since 1904, fostered
collaborations between her group
and Mr. Rockefeller in the operation
and management of APVA’s historic
Williamsburg properties. The mutual
benefits were manifest. By 1980, Colonial
Williamsburg was steward of those
properties.

The collaboration continued—
most recently, the foundation, APVA,
and the NPS worked closely with the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and other Historic Triangle
interests to commemorate Jamestown’s quadricentennial.
In September of this year, the collaboration took
a giant step forward.

Colonial Williamsburg signed a renewable five-year
agreement to assume APVA Preservation
Virginia’s operations, management, and external
affairs responsibilities at Historic Jamestowne. Jim
Horn, our vice president for research and historical interpretation,
leads the initiative, supported by $3.5 million
in gifts to the foundation restricted to this purpose.

This is an extraordinary opportunity. It advances
public archaeology as practiced at the Historic Jamestowne
site led by Dr. Bill Kelso, which complements
our work at Charlton’s Coffeehouse and the Anderson Blacksmith and Public Armoury. Elizabeth Kostelny,
Preservation Virginia’s executive director, says, “We
believe that this collaborative effort will utilize the
archaeological research as a basis for new and creative
public programming and elevate awareness of this site
and its history.” The Nathalie P. and Alan M. Voorhees
Archaearium on Jamestown Island, which displays the
archaeological discoveries, will also be the responsibility
of Dr. Horn and his Colonial Williamsburg colleagues.

To maintain their currency, historic sites must
deepen their knowledge and understanding of the history
they talk about, and that is just what we are doing. “Together,” Ms. Kostelny says, “we can accomplish what
neither of our organizations could support alone.”

Historic Jamestowne is a national and
international site, and yet its history
is not widely acknowledged. We are
determined to change that. With the NPS,
which also is the Yorktown Battlefield’s
custodian, the foundation and APVA
Preservation Virginia are asking the
United Nations Educational, Scientific,
and Cultural Organization to assign
Virginia’s Historic Triangle—with
original sites Historic Jamestowne,
Colonial Williamsburg, and the Yorktown
Battlefield—World Heritage status.
It would be the twenty-first in
America, joining such designees as
Independence Hall and the Statue of Liberty.

Within the Historic Triangle, the English established
their first permanent colony in North America,
began sustained contact with Indian peoples,
brought enslaved Africans into an emerging cultural
diversity, and launched the American experiment in
representative government. Although the two major
museums operated by the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation (Jamestown Settlement and the Yorktown
Victory Center) do not meet UNESCO criteria,
they too stand to benefit from this effort.

It will be at least five years before World Heritage
site designation can be achieved, but bringing
Historic Triangle groups together to move the
process forward promises to be invaluable and will
advance Colonial Williamsburg’s mission: That the
future may learn from the past.